


Breaking, Broken, Dying, Dead

by Dansnotavampire



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Falling in (and out of) love, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Internal Monologue, M/M, Relationship Study, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 14:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15665136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dansnotavampire/pseuds/Dansnotavampire
Summary: You don't die at the end of the story.Until it turns out that, actually, you do.





	Breaking, Broken, Dying, Dead

You are breaking. 

Then you are broken. 

Then you are dying. 

 

Then you are dead. 

 

You are breaking when Warren Kepler finds you in a bar, alone and sad and without a single thing left to lose. You continue to break as he trains you, fixes you into what he wants, all rough edges and fast fingers and irreverence. He breaks you further, under the guise of fixing you. Giving you a purpose, a life, a list of things to lose. 

 

You are broken when he pushes you away from him, on a cold night as you sit together and watch a building burn. You are leaning on eachother, his arm slung around your shoulder, a bottle of whiskey shared between the two of you. You might be drunk. You might just be feeling brave. 

 

Either way, you still kiss him. 

 

And he still pushes you away, and your heart still breaks because you think you love him, (you don't) and (you think that) you want him to love you back (he does, but he doesn't realise it until too late). 

 

“Daniel,” he says, voice firm and tender and sad and smug and somehow with a tone that conveys everything without really meaning anything. 

 

He just doesn't want you. You don't kiss him again. 

 

You are dying when Maxwell does. That is all. 

 

She was your sister, and your friend, and the person you trusted most in the world, and she is gone, and you start to die, to rot from anger and pain and hopelessness.

 

And you scream at Kepler for not saving her, and for treating you the way he did, and for everything he's ever done to you, and she still doesn't come back. 

 

This is when you know you don't love him. 

(This is when he realises that he loves you, fire and anger and impossible  _ strength _ in your eyes. It's just too late for you both.)  

 

You die when you reach earth again, and visit the empty graves of your family.  You scream at them, and you cry, and you bruise your knuckles punching Kepler’s stone, and was that even his real name? Probably not. You didn't even know  _ him _ . (That doesn't make it hurt less. You still loved him, once upon a time.) 

 

(You think that) You die in that graveyard, missing your family, missing your sister, and missing the man who killed her. 

 

Then you pick yourself up off of the floor, empty the bottle of whiskey, and carry on home. 

 

Because as impossible as it seems, you're not actually dead yet. 


End file.
